Well, I thought my 2020 blog post was hard to sound positive while the world spiraled more out of control around me but
2021 has certainly been ... challenging, with some monumental changes here at Tym guitars.
The year started much like 2020 finished with my old shop open a few days a week with the local area being a ghost town and within months, with landlords thinking they were somehow immune from what was still very much an ongoing dilemma, I had to make the VERY difficult decision in March to close down my favourite space in the world.
So after running bricks and mortar shops for 20 years I moved back into my original workshop in April and I was lucky enough to essentially hit the ground somewhat running, albeit stumbling along the way, and work in a much more limited capacity from this crowded little space.
By the end of April with the new website running and my head slightly realigned and focused I started logistics on what the rest of 2021 was going to look like after such a huge upheaval. After a lengthy clean up process I started ordering parts to make things and started taking on limited repair work again. Luckily, and I mean that very seriously, I have great customers who had waited for me to be functional again and soon enough I was busy.
While this year has definitely been a cut down version as far as volume of Tym stuff made and repair work done, I did manage to make about 200 Tym effects including new designs like the Wizz Fuzz, Square Sound, the 2FA series and the Spitting Cobra along with 5 of my new custom hand painted series and plenty of charity pedals.
I managed to make a surprising (to me) number of pickups including my Wosrite '64 and Tym Mosrite in a P-90 along with some custom work like this P-90 in a Filtertron size and rewound a few special ones.
I found time to make some pretty cool custom parts and pieces for people and time (and parts) to make quite a few Tym cables which seem to disappear when I get them on the site, which is lovely.
In April Instagram locked me out of my account with over 30K followers so I set up a new account and trudged on but by October my rule of only posting positive sentiments was getting harder and I essentially removed myself from social media (almost) completely and set up a NEWS feed on my site for people who want to keep up with what's going on here. I now post on my social media every few weeks but I don't look at it at all which is actually kind of liberating once you get over the withdrawals.
As the end of the year approached I needed something to distract me from the world so I decided to reinstate the old Mosrite section on my site for those who are as enamored with the greatest guitars ever made as I am. I also decided I was going to start 2 new TMI guitars. One was inspired by my ultimate guitar building hero, Semie Moseley and was heavily based on the pre Maphis/Ventures design he made for Standel in 1962. The other is going to take longer and is another homage to another huge influence on my guitar building life, but you'll have to wait till (hopefully) next year for that one.
Which brings me up to date with the end of this bizarre and challenging year. Having lost my shop, which was like losing a part of me, and then adjusting to the "new" Tym guitars has been ... difficult, but I still consider myself exceedingly lucky to be supported by customers who like what I do and are happy to fund that while I do things I love. None of this would be possible without YOU and I know how hard it's been to be a artists and/or working musician this (and last) year so THANK YOU for keeping this place going.
I'd love to say next year, which is my 25th anniversary is going to improve and look better in some way but I'm really not confident expressing that sentiment so I will just say what I've been saying since about Feb 2020, Be safe. Be sensible. Support each other.
As always contact me through the site if you need me and check my NEWS feed and BLOG regularly if you're interested in what goes on around here.